Historian Michael Steinberg is named a 2003 Guggenheim fellow

By Franklin Crawford

Steinberg

Michael Steinberg, professor of history at Cornell, is a recipient of a 2003 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to conduct research abroad during his 2003-04 sabbatical leave. In addition, Steinberg was awarded the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin. The latter prize will allow Steinberg to study in Berlin next fall as a member of the academy; he will continue his fellowship project in the states in the spring of 2004.

Guggenheim fellowship winners for 2003 -- 184 artists, scientists and scholars -- were given a total of $6.7 million by the foundation. They were selected from more than 3,200 applicants and chosen based on distinguished achievement and exceptional promise for future accomplishments.

Steinberg's academic specialty at Cornell is modern European cultural and intellectual history and modern Germany and Austria. In 2000 he was awarded the Victor Adler Staatspreis, the Austrian government's prize for the best historical work, for his book Austria as Theater and Ideology: The Meaning of the Salzburg Festival. The book examines the world-renowned Salzburg Music Festival as a microcosm of modern Austrian identity and conflicts. In the book's second edition, Steinberg relates the festival to Austria's current political flirtation with right-wing politics. In addition Steinberg has published articles about this and other related topics in The New York Times and in scholarly journals.

The Guggenheim fellowships are designed to help fellows secure a block of time, free from other duties, in which to pursue their own scholarly or creative work. Steinberg will use that time to focus on a book-in-progress, tentatively titled Judaism and Generations in German Europe.

"Starting in the period of 18th century Enlightenment and emancipation and concluding the post-Holocaust era, the book will offer a new perspective on the subtle relations between German and Jewish identity," Steinberg said.

While Guggenheim stipends only cover living expenses for the year, the fellowships are highly prestigious. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisers and are approved by the foundation's board of trustees, which includes eight members who are themselves past fellows: Joel Conarroe, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard A. Rifkind, Charles A. Ryskamp, Jean Strouse, Wendy Wasserstein, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich and Edward Hirsch.

Since the fellowship program began in 1925, the Guggenheim foundation has granted more than $185 million to nearly 15,000 individuals. Noted Cornell winners have included A.R. Ammons, the late poet and Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry, and novelist Alison Lurie, professor emerita of English. David M. Lee, professor of physics and winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize in physics, received Guggenheim fellowships in 1966 and 1974.